


Clark Kent

by writingtheworks



Series: the c in DC stands for "cringey" [7]
Category: Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Other, Reader Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 11:35:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19208572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingtheworks/pseuds/writingtheworks
Summary: Clark fics from my reader-insert Tumblr days. Enjoy!





	1. The Sun

**Author's Note:**

> apricate. v. 1690s, “to bask in the sun,” from Latin apricatus, past participle of apricari “to bask in the sun,” from apricus “exposed” (to the sun)

The grass is healthy and  _alive_ beneath your body, almost cocooning your form with its height. You card your fingers through the blades and knot your hands in them, feeling the dirt sink into your nails, the Earth’s heart beating and pulsing under your touch. It’s just shy of sunset when you hear the squeaky front door teeter shut. The breeze brings Clark Kent’s scent closer, and eventually, his body joins yours, planted in the Earth and grown there.

“You know,  _I’m_ supposed to be the one who gets their powers from the sun,” Clark remarks.

This may be true, but the sun is a beautiful thing. He is the one who taught you this. You’d spent too many mornings watching Clark sit on the balcony of your apartment in Metropolis, waiting for the sun to rise. When it finally broke high enough in the sky to bend the shadow of your building, even if it had yet to cast over the stone balcony, he’d reach over the edge as far as his body would allow and watch his hand underneath the soft rays. The way his long fingers curled and grasped at the light, trying to hold it in his palm, always managed to awake something in you. Now, Clark realizes what you meant.

Your figure is hidden in the ankle-high grass that he has to cut, feet and soul bared for the sun to touch. He watched in a delicate, white-noise filled slow motion as your digits raised to touch the sun back. It had reached the point where the great oak at the beginning of the property no longer obstructed it from view. But part of the light was tossed over the lawn in leaf-patterned fractures, painted on the grass’ brush-stroked backdrop. It is not a red sun, an orange sun, or even a gold sun. It is yellow. Yellow that makes your skin glow and his eyes close.

“I know,” You breathed. There is no smile on your visage, but your eyes are shut and the muscles in your face have lost their tension. Peace is absorbed into your skin like a sponge absorbs water, and you wonder if the sun is the source of Clark’s contentment and hope as he is yours.”But you can’t feel the moonlight as well as you can feel the sunlight. It’s just a mimicry. An echo.”

Clark digested your words, lips quirked and legs crissed-crossed as he sits beside you. He smiles down at you as you threw an arm dramatically over your eyes,”Offly poetic of you, Ms. Y/N.”

“ _Pssh!_ ” You snorted, rolling over and half-into his side as you hugged yourself in your mirth.”Oh,  _please_ , Clark. You are clearly, out of the two of us, the most poetic. And not to forget,  _dramatic_.”

“I’d like to politely disagree, if I may—” Clark began with a grin, watching you curl around his back and against his legs while you laughed. His tone was playful and mocked a colonial presidential candidate. You held yourself up on an elbow, folding your calves against your thighs and revealing the sunflower he had gifted you earlier. You pointed at him with it,”No. I have proof that you’re more dramatic. I can quote you,  _directly_.”

“Please,” Clark smirked, shrugging his palms in a  _“why not?”_ gesture before clapping them against his jean-clad knees.”Be my guest.”

“ _Oh, Y/N,_ ” You stage-whispered with a deeper tone that was nothing like Clark’s, pulling the sunflower into your chest to represent yourself. You tried to convey the emotion of the scene in which he’d spoken the words, cradling your broken body to his chest and shielding you from the flying debris around you.” _You’re my sun._ ” You told Clark dramatically.

Clark cupped one side of your face, and your smile dropped abruptly when he began to imitate your voice and quote your past words,” _And you’re mine, Clark Kent._ ”

He broke out into laughter when you huffed incredulously,”I don’t sound like that!”

Regardless of your mild annoyance, you still press your nose into the sunflower’s petals, embracing a different kind of warmth. You turn your back on the sun and face Clark, chest expanding with the airy feeling that took a forever to realize was love. You felt like he’d taken you flying again, or you were on a roller coaster that was constantly falling, your heart weightless—okay, maybe you were a bit more dramatic than Clark, but still…

“You are more dramatic,” Clark held a finger lightly against your lips to stop your playful retort,”But you are also more romantic.” He compromised.

“That we can agree on,  _mon chéri_.” You held the sunflower between your teeth and winked at him. His smile grew by a fraction and you found his hand resting on your bare knee, slowly gliding down your thigh to the edge of your farmer’s shorts and back up again. The sweet caress makes your playful attitude diminish, replaced by the true romantic one in which Clark praises. You returned to your position lying on your back, your spine to the Earth, and hold the sunflower over your heart as you slip your hand down his back,”Apricate with me.”

Clark, instead, rolls onto his side and turns his gaze on you, wriggling his legs and kicking at his heels until his shoes come off. When he’s freed, he smirks and cocks an eyebrow,”Apricate?”

“It means  _to bathe in the sun_. Use that in an article, paper boy.” You spread your limbs gratefully embracing the sun, arm-span falling over Clark’s body. Tenderly, you laid your fingers on his eyelids and drew them shut,”Close your eyes for me.”

Clark did so, eyes fluttering shut completely. The gentle pads of your fingers left his face, but then soon slid over his knuckles and knotted with them. You’re closer when you whisper, and with the absence of his sight he can sense everything intensely, from the dips of your chest to the light callouses on your fingers,”What do you hear?”

He focuses on his ears. He hears the cicadas chirping in the aging trees on the property, the shuffle of slippers on wood as Martha shimmies about the kitchen while  _Jailhouse Rock_  plays on the crackling radio. He hears the tinkle of a cow-bell from the farm over, and the light whistle of the breeze combing through leaves and ancient wood. Clark hears your heartbeat, a clarity amongst everything, and he squeezes your fingers.

“A truck driving down the highway,” He whispers. You close your eyes and feel the sun leak into your pores, and now you can imagine everything he can hear, everything he can taste or touch. _He’s beautiful_ , you think to yourself. Not in the attractive,  _pretty_ way that Clark still is. But in the awe-inspiring, earth-moving, sun-lit and utterly heart-pounding way. The way where people look up at you and whisper in wonder,” _Is it a bird? Is it a plane?_ ” The way you could only dream of being, the way you are lucky to see on the other side of the bed each morning.

“Somebody painting their house. Water dripping in a well,” Clark releases your hand and lays it over your waist. You push yourself back into him, head tucked into the grass with his eyes still shut against your skin. You watch the sun start to set on the horizon, Clark humming as he lays a kiss on your spine,”My favorite heartbeat.”

“Oh, Clark.” You sighed, cupping his face from behind. You felt him turn his head into your hand and lay another kiss on the heart of your palm,”You really are my sun.” You echoed his words with a grin on your face.

Clark settled his nose between your shoulder blades, wiggling an arm under your waist and the other across your hip. The grass tickles his cheek when he responds, beaming,”And you’re mine, Ms. Y/N.”


	2. Different

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Clark opened his palms and stared down at them in frustration, you saw them quiver with his breath,“I don’t want to be a god, Y/N. I just want to be Clark Kent—not the kid from out there,” Clark cast his eyes to the sky, “But their son. Your boyfriend.” When his gaze fixes in on you, they are barely shining with angry tears,“I just want to be normal, Y/N.”

The dry, yellowed light of a dying sun filtered through the cracks in the roofing, spilling from the Kent Family’s attic window and across the two figures sat beneath it. The attic smells like sawdust and wood, little particles falling like snow in the window’s light. Old trunks and racks of clothing lined the walls, standing beside aged and three-legged dining chairs, piles of books shoved in dilapidated bookshelves. It is a room filled with artifacts that might still be useful one day. It is a room filled with chances of discovery and potential, much like the young man sitting before you.

Clark Kent twists the crystal in his hand, and you watch his eyes as they trace its edges and sharp ends. He inspects it under the sunlight, the fractal glittering the same shade of ice blue that his eyes are. You smiled when Clark guided you into his side to see it from his perspective. Together, you watch the gift Clark’s parents—his  _real_ parents—had left with him.

“I always wondered,” You murmured, a distracted whisper held between your bodies.“I mean, no normal guy can stick his hand in a woodchipper and  _break the woodchipper_ , but there was always something…  _special_ about you. Personality wise.”

Clark smiled a little, but it was one of those smiles where he was trying to show he was happy even if he wasn’t. You knew his smiles very well; the caught-off-guard, spur of the moment, mid-laughter grins that shine with something  _real_ ; the awkward, boyish, closed-lip smiles he holds when becoming the subject of one of your photos; the secretive smirks when you whisper and tease in his ear, causing red to prickle up his neck and the tips of his ears; and the sad smiles, like the one currently conquering his expression now.

“And what’s that?” He asked. Clark turned his gaze on you, hiding the other-worldly item in his palm. Your faces were close. Close enough where you can lay your ear on his shoulder (which you do), close enough for him to smile when you rest you hand on his shoulder (which he does), and close enough where you feel like you can see through his almost transparent eyes. If the eyes are truly the windows to the soul, then you could read everything about Clark right here and now.

You sighed, pressing your lips together and thought it over. It was hard to describe what about Clark made him different. Regardless of what his DNA or what his parents told him, Clark was very human—he acted like one, looked like one, spoke like one. He  _is_ human. But there was still something so ethereal to his character that made you look twice. Maybe it was how light he seemed to walk, where his steps fell without sound, like he was hovering a centimeter off the ground without your knowledge. Maybe it was how unconditionally giving he was, giving and giving until he had nothing left to lend anymore.

“I don’t know,” you said with a shrug,“You just seem… you just seem too big for this little town, Clark.”

“So do you,” Clark said. The corner of his lip lifted, but then feel as he frowned. Clark quietly shook his head and confessed,“But I don’t want to be too big. I don’t want to be different, Y/N. Did I tell you what I heard Dad say to Ma?”  
You shook your head and furrowed your brows, holding your attention to Clark’s worries. He set the crystal down between his legs and began to wring his hands, smoothing them down his jeans and repeating the pattern, his eyes floor-facing and his head downcast. You frowned moreso with his feelings than for the story.

It was always hard to be so close to Clark. You were the one person outside of Clark’s parents who knew his secret, and that meant you were apart of his family, and that he trusted you. It also meant that your string of fate would forever entwine with his, and that the others in your and Clark’s circle of friends only saw the happy and awkward side of him. They saw the shy farm boy who his parents hid from everyone. You saw the young man who had too much love for a world he wasn’t from, who used to cry because his toy dinosaurs couldn’t fit in his schoolbag, who frowns and worries over everything, who’s afraid to kiss his girlfriend in case he shatters her in his hands. You wished you were ignorant when it came to knowing Clark wasn’t the sweet, quiet boy you used to daydream about in science class. But at the same time, you were overjoyed to know that he was so much more than that.

“She and Dad were arguing about letting me join football or not,” Clark said. His breath shook momentarily, but he solved it by clearing his throat.“Ma wanted me to join so I could make more friends. She said, _‘How do you think he met Y/N? We let him join the school newspaper! What if he meets his best friend on that team?’_ ”

That was true. Jonathan Kent consistently kept Clark from any activities that could reveal his powers to the little town. He was that mysterious boy you’d seen walking in the halls and maybe had two conversations with, who picked up your books when you dropped them, and never showed up to school dances or other events. During the early months of your crush on him, your best friend had deemed him “Y/N’s mystery boy”. (You’d always correct them, saying, _“His name is Clark Kent! He’s not that much of a mystery if we see him every day and know his name.”_ ). The one time Jonathan was lenient—it was just the school newspaper—you and Clark were paired for the world news column. He wrote and you edited together after school in the library, which eventually you both referred to as “dates” until you got to where you were now.

“But you know Dad didn’t want me to join. Thought I would accidentally hurt someone,” Clark said. He spoke the words as if they were fact, like he knew that it was entirely a possibility that he could hurt someone. You hated that both Clark and Mr. Kent were right. At the time the argument was first brought up you continuously argued that Clark would never willingly hurt anyone (which was also true), but he had accidentally gotten you with his heat vision once, and he’d accidentally hurt others in similar manners. Every time he even  _thought_ you were in pain because of him, he didn’t touch you for the next week, then kissed whatever he thought was injured and apologized continuously. But the keyword was  _accidentally_.

Clark closed his eyes and sighed.“He said, _'Do you understand what he can do? Clark could tear apart a building with his bare hands! Burn that school to the ground! He can_  fly _. He’s basically a god!’._ ”

When Clark opened his palms and stared down at them in frustration, you saw them quiver with his breath,“I don’t want to be a god, Y/N. I just want to be Clark Kent—not the kid from  _out there_ ,” Clark cast his eyes to the sky,“But their son. Your boyfriend.” When his gaze fixes in on you, they are barely shining with angry tears,“I just want to be normal, Y/N.”

“Oh, Clark,” you breathed heavily. Unwinding your arm from around his back, you stood from the old wicker chair with the loose leg and crouched down in front of him. You took his quaking fists and untied them, pulling his indestructible flawless palms and press both over your heart. You made sure you had his gaze but he refused to give it, blinking rapidly and shaking his head like he was trying to get something from his head.

After a breath of confusion, Clark’s eyes reopened and he narrowed them around the room, irises fixating on your face like a camera lens made of painted glass.“Sorry,” He breathed,“The vision stuff… it’s hard to control when I’m upset.”

Using one hand to keep Clark’s palms to your heart, you laid your hand on his cheek and nodded,“That’s alright. It will always be alright. And that’s what I was going to say—it’s  _okay_ you’re different, and I think that it’s better that you are.”

At your words, Clark’s face softened. He inclined his head in the way you always caught him doing; like he was listening for something. He lightly applied pressure to your chest, feeling your heartbeat, your skin humming with life and strength. Clark smiled and kept his head tilted, keeping your heartbeat in his ears as you stay in his sights.

You flushed. He was listening to your heartbeat, wasn’t he? You know you loved hearing his, a soft drumming to lull you into sleep with your ear to his chest. The thought refreshes you with a tenderness that it so natural when around him, and you wonder if he must feel the same as you drilled your thoughts into his heart.“ You’re not like all of these close-minded assholes at our school. You love everyone, even if they have wronged you, even if they don’t deserve it. You value every life. You’re  _caring_ , but in a way that is almost overpowering, and I love that about you.”

“Yes, you are different. That might be because you have these abilities, but I think it’s because you love unconditionally,” You ran your thumb under Clark’s eye,“And that’s a good thing.”

It was then that Clark pulled another one of his famous smiles. The smile that he pulled when he was caught off guard, when he was truly happy, a grin so bright it was like a lamp in comparison to the sun. It was the one too hard to capture in photos, but embedded into a person’s memory forever. When Clark grins, you return the gesture.

He sighed,“If you’re expecting me to try and respond to that with something better, I can’t.”

You fell back into the trunk behind you as you laughed, covering your mouth and shaking with mirth. The crystal rocks when Clark pushes the chair out behind him, dipping down and scooping you up into his arms in a single motion. You squeal, so loudly and spontaneously that a couple of birds outside the window fly from the trees.

“Clark!” You shrieked, gripping his collar in your hand and wiggling for a safer position.

That stupid, dumb pretty smile remains carved onto his lips,“Do you have any idea how amazing you are? You basically just listed a bunch of stuff you like about me,  _and_ managed to inspire me in at least two paragraphs of words.”

“Two things,” You raised two fingers casually,“One: everything I  _love_ about you. Two: it’s why I was apart of the school newspaper.”

Clark’s expression fluctuated about in his surprise. One moment his head was tilted to the side, eyes narrowed as he deciphered your corrections. Then his face was swept with a merciless wave of blush, his jaw falling slack,“You… you love me?”

“I do,” you admitted, lifting yourself higher with the arms you had knotted around his neck. When you pressed your kiss to his cheek Clark became redder, his mouth slamming shut to muffle a pleasant gasp that escaped anyway. You had contemplated saying it outright in your dramatic speech, but Clark was a smart young man when it came to words, and you trusted him to find the meaning behind yours. After a quick knuckle-to-cheek inspection, you determined that your face was hot—very,  _very_ hot.

“Obviously.” You added, your volume dropping in your hesitance. But was it obvious? Surely you had shown that to Clark in your affections. You knew that he loved you; Clark was so starved romantically that he’d trail you like a lost puppy, waiting under the dinner table for a piece of your food. If “food” in this analogy meant tender touches, tight embraces, and secret kisses anyway. It wasn’t unknown that you were a clingy pair.

The teen, as expected in response to such a serious confession, immediately sprung to life. You were deposited onto the floor as Clark walked to the other side of the attic and back again, grinning ear-to-ear and blushing deeply. He combed his hands through his hair and awkwardly questioned,“You really mean that, Y/N? You want to…?”

“What?” You smirked, crossing your arms and watching him work off the excited energy about as fast as it was created.“Marry you? Have sex with you?” You laughed when Clark flushed at both comments. Waving your hands in surrender and shaking your head, you snickered,“I’m just kidding, Clark. Easy.”

“I was going to say _'get more serious’_ , but uh…” Clark trailed off. You giggled again, shaking your head and curling on yourself with mirth.

Clark groaned in embarrassment when you continued to laugh. He was still smiling when he asked,“Why are you so mean to me if you love me, sunshine?”

You laid your hands on Clark’s shoulders, your own still shaking, your snickers since escalating to almost cackling. He was so shy and sensitive when it came to the topic of sex, it was just easier to not resist the want to tease him. “It's—It’s because—” You dissolved into more laughter, and Clark watched in silent amusement as you collapsed into him, rolling his eyes at your insanity and capturing your waist in his hands to keep you steady. You didn’t fail to notice how light his touch was. Lighter than usual, gentle enough for there being no way of hurting you at all.

“It’s because I’m an asshole, Clark.” You said, only half-serious.

“I mean, you are an asshole,” Clark began. His sentence was punctuated by you snickering delightfully, entirely aware that you are an asshole.“But you’re a good, funny asshole. Like Han Solo, or Indiana Jones. You’re a Harrison Ford asshole.”

“Does that mean you’re my Princess Leia?” You asked into the neck of his hoodie, your arms barricaded over his shoulders.

“Yes.” Clark agreed. Then added,“I am  _literally_ a space princess.”

At that you giggled together, embracing lazily in the middle of the sun-yellowed attic. The microscope in front of the window cast a shadow against your faces, and you placed your hand on where that shadow blanketed Clark’s skin.

“I love you too, y'know,” Clark said, trying to settle the waters of the moment into something calmer and sweeter.

“I know,” You smiled. Clark immediately scowled, causing the dam to finally break; you unwound your body from his and keeled over, your entire body shaking as you wheezed and snickered and cackled with your own reference.  _I love you,_  Leia had said. _I know,_  Han had replied in  _Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back._

You heard Clark sigh as you stumbled and fell against the window in your delirious merriment. He now knew what you meant by  _“being different is good”._ You were different. You were different because no one inspired him so expertly and effortlessly, no one laughed so happily at their own jokes, no one joked about Star Wars with him and called him a space princess. You were different, so beautifully different. And maybe Clark didn’t know how he let himself fall in love with you, but he certainly knew the  _why_ ; you were different, and being different is a very, very good thing.


	3. Cornfields in November

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The corn has ears and they are listening, no longer prepared to calm with nature’s lulling voice, unafraid of the moons watchful eye as they know she can only observe. She cannot save you. She can only observe.

Just on the cusp of fall, when October disappears with the cycles of the moon and November rises in its place, Smallville is at its most dangerous. Well, it’s  _always_ a little dangerous. Clark never shuts up with the warnings,  _watch out for those kidnappers if you go into town_ ,  _and oh, make sure you avoid the highway at night, and—_ But then something dangerous actually happens and everyone settles back on their heels and  _forgets_.

That’s why you’ve always thought the first week of November was so treacherous… everyone forgot about the fear for a little while. Hid in the safety of Halloween’s ending. Your mom liked to joke that we caught the  _real_ thinning of the veil a few days short down in Smallville. Maybe, you realize, she’s right.

You get the morning to yourself. The kids on your bus are too tired to talk, Clark drives his truck, and you have your old Walkman and the same two cassettes in your bag. Even if your neighbors weren’t taking down their Halloween decorations you would know that it’s the beginning of November. Not only are the innards of your cassettes torn to shreds, but Clark is on the bus.

He crams his bag between his legs and scoots to make room for you. When you take the offered seat you bus driver cuts a look; past couples on the bus have ruined your chances of getting a grim-curing hug in greeting. Clark settles for entwining your fingers out of sight.

Talking so early in the morning, even in a town of farmers, seems taboo and wrong. Your voice seems to cut through the mist and the motor to catch between the two of you with an edge you did not give it. “Why are you on the bus? Something happen to the truck?”

“Yeah,” Clark grouches, “Wouldn’t start this morning. I tried to get a look, but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I’m just gonna tell Pa that took the bus because I missed you or something—I don’t want him worrying about trying to fix it himself. How’d you know?”

“Just a feeling,” you shrugged. Clark’s fingers are warm in an unearthly, beautiful way, an escape from the steadily gaining chill on your back. You’re so cold that his palm almost burns.

“You look pretty shaken,” he observed. “And cold. You wanna borrow my jacket? You can be all cliche and wear it for the rest of the day.”

“Do you  _want_ Pete to make fun of me?” Your chuckle is extra dry.

“He won’t, I’ll make sure of it. Besides—I’d rather face his snark than have you freeze,” Clark says, and throws the jacket across your lap. Your fingers dig into the material like a starving man kneading dough. Clark repeats, gently, “You look real shaken.”

“You ever had sleep paralysis, Clark?”

“No,” Clark says, and the look on his face makes you want to take it back immediately.

Half of it is that sympathy for you and the other is envy’s sorrowful cousin, another reminder of how alien Clark is sometimes. He glances out the window at the mist and the hills and the barren fields. You both know it’s a little silly to want to be sick or to at least know what it’s like, but Clark is just weird like that. His (mortal) curiosity almost inspires a scoff; Clark  _is_ human, by every definition except biological—and people can still be  _physically_ human and yet a monster in every other way. That’s just how the world works.

“Good. It  _sucks_ ,” you said, burying your hands into the cavern of his jacket sleeves. The cocoon swallows you and you enjoy it maybe a little too much. “Hell, thought I was being murdered. Could have  _sworn_ someone was choking me or something. Dad said that it was a hallucination.”

“I could stay over tonight, if you’d like,” he suggests.

He is answered with face in his arm and a thankful sigh of relief. “If I’d  _like?_ Hoo boy, understatement of the century.”

Clark puts a hand against the glass in an oddly stoic manner. It shudders on wheels that roll over gravel, the corn beyond becoming more frail, the beginnings of frost melting under Clark’s warmth in a jealous retreat. It’s now that the cold feels most alive. When fall ends, they call it the dead of winter for a reason.

“Hey,” he starts, suddenly confused, “It’s really dark for daylight savings. I’m used to some fog on an early morning… but shouldn’t it be lighter out right now?”

You search the sky for the sun, even a blurred imitation under a dirty mirror, but Clark’s right; not even the moon is out. It could be nine at night for all you knew. A part of you wants to attribute it to the sharpening intensity that the feet of November bring. Another wants to shrug, press your face into Clark’s shoulder, then get rudely awakened by that useless speed bump in the school parking lot.

Guess which part wins out.

**_**

Pete’s bus has a problem bad enough to keep him out there well into second period, and Lana takes his open chair beside you in your study hall. You tell her about your sleep paralysis. Clark shares his complications with the truck. She opens up and confesses that her dad had to go into their barn with a shotgun that morning; he’d  _sworn_ he’d heard something, but he refused to tell Lana what.

She and Clark start talking then because you’re taking the time to read something for English. On any other day, this would be perfectly fine and acceptable. Clark and Lana have a couple classes without you and have been friends for a good amount of time. There’s no way it’s a problem, either, considering that you can’t dictate who Clark talks to. It is also too easy to see who is friends and who is more: Lana keeps flicking spitballs at him when he gets distracted by your game of footsie beneath the table.

But all of a sudden, it’s not. Lana smiles at Clark and Clark laughs back and your chest burns. It’s a sudden, intense feeling, fabricated from nothing apparent, and when you excuse yourself to a bathroom to calm down you  _swear_ there aren’t trees where trees  _should_ be. Where there aren’t fields in Smallville there are forests. Where there aren’t forests is pale, dead land soon to be laden with snow. This is not the case of the territory surrounding your high school.

You pass it off. The needless fear helps you recover and forget about Lana and Clark, but never just Clark. The warm weight of his jacket is a memory of fingers in your hair and sunny fields and that breathlessness that comes with being high in the air. A fantasy of his hand on your back is enough to smooth the hitch in your breath, but the reality of it is an entire serenity.

“You okay?” Clark murmurs.

“Is Y/N  _okay?_ ” Pete echoes upon his arrival, “Look at them, man. They look  _better_ than okay. Lana, tell me I’m not the only one who is grossed out by how in love Y/N looks.”

“I mean, I don’t blame them,” Lana says and the suggestion that she likes Clark is there, that burning starts to fill your throat, until she playfully diverts, “That book  _is_ pretty good.”

The burn is swallowed down as you flash the cover at her, “Damn right!”

Clark laughs, eyes crinkling, everything about him clean and perfect in the way that most daydreams are. His sneakers are shy when they hook around your ankles and ravel for warmth. His cheeks are red, and he says something about the cold when Pete tries to pinch them.

“Alright, guys—while I was stuck in hell and freezing my ass off on the side of the road earlier, I had a really good idea,” Pete opens. “So, y’know how we were all lazy for Halloween and didn’t do anything?”

“Define  _lazy_ ,” Lana interjects.

Pete keeps going, playfully swatting her off. “I say we go into the cornfields behind Clark’s house and explore that old farm behind the hill.”

“That sounds fun. I think it’s going to warm up tonight, too,” Lana agreed.

Clark sounds hesitant, but will eventually submit to Pete’s wants one way or another. “Depends. Is it really abandoned? Do we know who owns it? I don’t want to be trespassing.”

You close your book and shake your head, “No way in  _hell_ am I going down there. It’s Mrs. Dobuse’s land, and she keeps saying she’s  _saving_ it for something, but she’s probably just going to let it rot there until she can turn it into a haunted death-trap and lead stupid kids like us there. This is the beginning of a horror story and we  _all_ know I’d get murdered first.”

“Not even for, like, a naked photo of Clark?” Pete jokes.

“I don’t  _need_ one, I’ve got the genuine article right here,” you jest in return, and Clark sputters loud enough to turn nearby heads.

Lana wheezes so hard you fear for her lungs. When she recovers, she’s pleading, “C’mon, Y/N! Do you see how funny you are? It’s gonna suck without you.”

You think about Clark and Lana and Pete out alone in that field, and Pete wandering off to try and scare them, leaving Clark and Lana alone… The burn rears its ugly head again. In spite of yourself, regardless of how Clark is and how much you trust him, you give in to the burn.

You give in to the unnameable force, and you say, “Fine. Sure.”

**_**

When picturing Kansas, there is wheat and sunshine and the blissful silence of distant neighbors and wide fields. Only the wind has a voice in the evening. It whispers, raspy and old and gentle, passing stories through the ears of corn, nature speaking to nature in the only way it knows how.

That’s how you know this is unnatural. The wind has a voice, it can talk and murmur and shout. November has stolen the sound for itself. Now there is only silence, pressing, ear-popping silence for as far as the fields will stretch and as thin as the moonlight will venture. You cling all too eagerly to the sound of Clark’s gentle breaths and Lana’s steps on the hard earth.

Lana brushes a stalk too roughly, and Pete jumps like every word he’d ever said about his bravery was a damn lie. Clark laughs and Lana laughs and Pete laughs. When you don’t, Clark turns his head and you pretend your fingers aren’t itching to fold under his jacket and around his back, soft against muscle that’s too hard to be human. To be normal.

It is startling and terrifying in some ways when you finally take a step back, look at him and realize who he is, how strong those hands are and how unusually soft his steps are. It should make you run. It should make you want to leave, just as Clark fears. But there is nothing to fear in him. Only that beautifully wicked smile and the paleness of his sweet eyes and what heartbreak they could bring.

Clark is, by your belief and understanding, as human as a golden sun and the rich fields at harvest time. He is your asylum from the dark.

“Scared?” Clark asks, and though his smile is hard to make out, once it is seen it is undeniable.

“Big time,” you snorted, “Or maybe I just love going for nightly strolls to abandoned, haunted barns.”

There’s a howl and you jerk, instinctively, back toward the direction of the Kent house. Martha left the light on the back porch. A mercy, and you realize how much you love Clark’s mother. You are soon to realize the same of Clark. His fingers are impossibly gentle when he offers them to you.

“Coyote,” Clark settles. His grin returns: “I  _think_.”

He can also be a total asshole. It’s cute, somehow.

“Shut up,” you swat at his hand, purposefully miss, and rectify it by slipping your knuckles through his.

Every terrifying thought about Smallive rushes toward you like racing boots in the dark. The graveyard in the middle of town, always empty, always old, and always in possession of at least one freshly dug tomb. Roads enclosed by trees. Endless, repetitive, with the same blank-eyed deer and the same blank-faced signs. Summer heat weighing against your throat. It prickles the skin like someone is watching you, choking you with their eyes.

You know the cornfield best from Clark’s bedroom window. You see it in your dreams when you share a bed with him, your back to his chest and your eyes to the night sky. It is an unending scene of oddly cut shadows, movement you’re too scared to pinpoint, narrated by the voice of something that isn’t nature, something calling you  _into_ nature, asking you what would happen if you went into the field or what would happen if you stepped off that ledge. The call beckons you into the void.

And you’re here. In the field. The corn has ears and they are listening, no longer prepared to calm with nature’s lulling voice, unafraid of the moons watchful eye as they know she can only observe. She cannot save you. She can only observe.

“I love you, Clark.” Because that is what you are supposed to say before you die.

Clark chuckles. “I love you, too,” he tilts his head and keeps walking toward the hill, through the corn. “It’s okay to be afraid—but you know the only thing that’s going to try and scare you out here is Pete, right?”

“Yeah,” you said, and bunched yourself into the corner of his jacket like one would collapse into bed after an experience such as this. “He can try it. I’d kick his ass. You tell me when he’s coming so that I can look cool and not-startled.”

Another laugh is shocked out of him. “Okay, tough guy.”

The stalks are too close and seem to braid together and apart again, revealing new paths and dead ends. You force the vision under the light. Suddenly you’re submerged in that same sunrise, the earth dewy under your touch, Clark at your side and watching the sky blush at the planet the moon had given it. He lets you steal his glasses and he kisses the first part of you he can reach.

 _What I would do for this_ ,  _every morning_ , Clark whispers. He closes his eyes and listen to the world as it wakes up. You don’t need to look at the heavens to see a true blessing.

Everything unravels and you are here, in the field, once more. Things are not different. There is still something calling to you from the forest over the hill, drawing you in, promising things that may not be true or real or even plausible.

“I have an idea,” Clark says, “It’s a little mean. Should I do it?”

Minutes later, Pete and Lana come tearing through the field over the hill, screaming their heads off. Once you’ve safely made it under the haven of the Kent’s porch, Lana retells their terrifying encounter with a flying shadow demon. You try not to grin when she describes exactly how it’d darted for them, a terrifying, hulking mass of death firing red bursts down onto their heads. You do laugh eventually; Pete shrieks when Clark drags himself out from behind the corn and skitters up the dark strip of lawn outside the light’s reach.

Yes, it’s scary. Yes, it’s unnatural. But it’s okay to be afraid.

( _But still_ , your mind supplies,  _don’t wander alone into cornfields in November._ )


End file.
